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Scottish Clubs in Europe


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1 hour ago, Doc Rob said:


Oh, don’t get me wrong, I am well aware of that. The point I’m making is that the team they can put on the park now is nowhere close to the level of the teams they used to put out. Except between the ears of their domestic opponents!

This is understood but I have just been discussing the merits of Belgian and Dutch football with that of Scotland.  A lot has got to do with the quality of youth football developed by the BeNe based clubs.  Despite significant improvement of late Scotland does not produce enough young players,

 

The quality of imports by the OF is better than what hey can find at home, they are still no way of the quality of player you mention in your post.  Money in England has significantly increased and such players would not have ventured north if the same level of funding was around in those days.

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3 hours ago, PortyJambo said:

 

Hartson said in the BT commentary that Celtic had been fantastic for 30 mins, and I thought to myself, pity the games lasts 90 mins you *****. To be fair, he did point out the same later in the game.

I thought Hartson was even handed last night, praised Celtic when they deserved it and criticised them when they deserved to be too.

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Bazzas right boot
6 hours ago, JimmyCant said:

Same as it’s ever been in my lifetime. We’ll get the odd result against them and we’ll often give them a game at home especially. But we’re losing most times because most times they are better than us. They are not ‘there for the taking’ They are currently both better than us and it’s not even close. There is no tactical formation or attitude change that will do much about that.

 

For now we should be concentrating on getting ahead of Hibs and Aberdeen regularly instead of this impossible dream nonsense that rears it’s head every time we start a season half decent. Christ I’m not wholly convinced we will beat Ross County this weekend, far less give Rangers a decent game at Ibrox 

 

 

Agreed. 

 

If we can beat the rest regularly we can go  from there. 

 

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6 hours ago, Doc Rob said:


Much as I agree with the second paragraph, this isn’t the Rangers side of the 80s with Woods, Souness, Steven, Stevens and Wilkins. It isn’t the Rangers side of the 90s with the likes of Goram, Laudrup, Gascoigne, Albertz and Gattuso. It isn’t the Rangers side of the mid-aughts with Klos, Ricksen, de Boer and Arteta. They don’t have a glittering array of international stars to call on. They’ve got a squad of decent players who are a bit better than the other teams can afford. The only similarity they have with the teams of old is the aura that means most teams are beaten in their heads before they take the field. If you can get past that then they are 100% there for the taking. That doesn’t mean it will be easy, but it’s a long way from impossible.

And this isn’t the Hearts side of 86,98 or 05/06 either.

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HeartsandonlyHearts
18 hours ago, Auldbenches said:

Running like **** is different from walking away.  

Both arse cheeks well booted tonight.

Any statement yet about our league not providing enough competition?

 

Both teams have lost games in the league to supposed weaker opponents. Hard to complain about lack of competition at home when you’re not skelping them weekly. I hate their yearly jaunt into Europe. Next will be the financial differences these big bully European teams have over them. I hate both @$$ cheeks evenly.

 

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54 minutes ago, HeartsandonlyHearts said:

Both teams have lost games in the league to supposed weaker opponents. Hard to complain about lack of competition at home when you’re not skelping them weekly. I hate their yearly jaunt into Europe. Next will be the financial differences these big bully European teams have over them. I hate both @$$ cheeks evenly.

 

They come out with every hypocritical cliche each season.  

The only good thing about Europe is they don't get any ref favours.  

I hope every other club wants what comes out of this new report and there's a breakaway. 

The only answer to get them out of it.

It would a great league without them even if it meant less money. 

I liked the interview with McCullough saying we should be looking at more than splitting them.  That's the attitude we need 

 

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3 minutes ago, Auldbenches said:

They come out with every hypocritical cliche each season.  

The only good thing about Europe is they don't get any ref favours.  

I hope every other club wants what comes out of this new report and there's a breakaway. 

The only answer to get them out of it.

It would a great league without them even if it meant less money. 

I liked the interview with McCullough saying we should be looking at more than splitting them.  That's the attitude we need 

 

Last night (Sevco match) one of them mentioned the paucity of the Sevco squad in relation to their French opponents, who have had CL millions over the years. Strangely, you never hear how non OF teams aren't able to have bigger/better squads due to a similar disparity in income. 

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Just now, NANOJAMBO said:

Last night (Sevco match) one of them mentioned the paucity of the Sevco squad in relation to their French opponents, who have had CL millions over the years. Strangely, you never hear how non OF teams aren't able to have bigger/better squads due to a similar disparity in income. 

Never mentioned when they are at home to livi etc.  

We pay the bbc for hypocrisy like this. 

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19 minutes ago, NANOJAMBO said:

Last night (Sevco match) one of them mentioned the paucity of the Sevco squad in relation to their French opponents, who have had CL millions over the years. Strangely, you never hear how non OF teams aren't able to have bigger/better squads due to a similar disparity in income. 

 

Exactly.

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1 hour ago, NANOJAMBO said:

Last night (Sevco match) one of them mentioned the paucity of the Sevco squad in relation to their French opponents, who have had CL millions over the years. Strangely, you never hear how non OF teams aren't able to have bigger/better squads due to a similar disparity in income. 

im sure a few years ago the papers were championing this because psg had properly pumped celtic and they said something like how can celtic be expected to compete with a team that cost i think 8-10 times as much. what they failed to mention was the weekend before (or after) celitc were playing either ross county or partick thistle and celtics team had cost 15-20 times as muc as RC or PT

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11 hours ago, Japan Jambo said:

 

Well that's pretty entitled. To be fair to Rangers I see many more downsides than upsides in granting that request, you can imagine someone blowing Lenny a kiss and going down like he's been shot by a sniper...

Is being Chris Sutton a protected characteristic now?

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17 hours ago, JimmyCant said:

And this isn’t the Hearts side of 86,98 or 05/06 either.


No, of course it isn’t. But here’s the thing. The sides of 98 and 05-06 had to be exceptional to compete for the league. Neither could sustain the challenge for more than a year. That’s because of the level of quality that Rangers and Celtic were able to pack their teams with, year after year. Also, they could afford to hold on to their top performers, whereas we were generally obliged to sell as soon as a decent offer came in. (1986 preceded the Souness revolution - the playing field may not have been level, but it was a lot flatter).

 

Neither Sevco nor Celtic can attract that level of quality nowadays. To be fair, neither can other teams, but our sights have been lowered less than theirs have. There’s basically zero chance of either of them being able to sign a Laudrup or a Larsson now. So, if a team can get past the ‘but they are the OF, so they must be amazing’ mental block, it might well be possible to challenge them without needing a once-in-a-generation team of talent to do it. You could argue it’s already happened, with St Johnstone winning both cups last season (knocking out Sevco in the SC, and with both sides of the OF losing to ‘diddy’ teams in the LC), and even we came within a penalty of winning the delayed SC against Celtic (with a side that nobody would claim to be exceptional).

 

Let’s be clear here. I am not claiming that dethroning the OF is easy, or that I think it’s likely it will happen. I’m merely saying that the advantage they have over the other clubs in terms of the team they can put on the park is smaller than it has been in decades. If the other clubs could get over the mental block they have about playing OF teams (as SAF did with his ‘you have to go to Glasgow and win’ attitude) then we might find that they’re not really all that after all.

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15 hours ago, Doc Rob said:


No, of course it isn’t. But here’s the thing. The sides of 98 and 05-06 had to be exceptional to compete for the league. Neither could sustain the challenge for more than a year. That’s because of the level of quality that Rangers and Celtic were able to pack their teams with, year after year. Also, they could afford to hold on to their top performers, whereas we were generally obliged to sell as soon as a decent offer came in. (1986 preceded the Souness revolution - the playing field may not have been level, but it was a lot flatter).

 

Neither Sevco nor Celtic can attract that level of quality nowadays. To be fair, neither can other teams, but our sights have been lowered less than theirs have. There’s basically zero chance of either of them being able to sign a Laudrup or a Larsson now. So, if a team can get past the ‘but they are the OF, so they must be amazing’ mental block, it might well be possible to challenge them without needing a once-in-a-generation team of talent to do it. You could argue it’s already happened, with St Johnstone winning both cups last season (knocking out Sevco in the SC, and with both sides of the OF losing to ‘diddy’ teams in the LC), and even we came within a penalty of winning the delayed SC against Celtic (with a side that nobody would claim to be exceptional).

 

Let’s be clear here. I am not claiming that dethroning the OF is easy, or that I think it’s likely it will happen. I’m merely saying that the advantage they have over the other clubs in terms of the team they can put on the park is smaller than it has been in decades. If the other clubs could get over the mental block they have about playing OF teams (as SAF did with his ‘you have to go to Glasgow and win’ attitude) then we might find that they’re not really all that after all.

 

It's looked increasingly like the OF are getting far fewer of the "always dreamed of playing in the OF derby" types and more of the "this is a good step in my career to get to the Big Five leagues" players. They're having to overpay to get them and they're less interested in staying for long spells once in Glasgow.

 

I'll say it until I'm blue in the face but wage disparities like in Scotland are fairly common around the world, but a 35 year headlock on the league title is extremely unusual. The resource advantage the OF have should be good for them to hold the title about 8 seasons per decade and I never expect that to change in my lifetime. But they've been helped to title dominance by dysfunction at Hearts and Hibs being, well, Hibs, meaning the next-closest clubs in size and resources often weren't knocking on the door when both of the cheeks had gas.

 

Now they're having to blow more of their resources to get dominant players. The FoH money now no longer has to go to paying down shares and can go to continuing financial stability. If we continue to recruit like we did this summer, we will be ready to shoot the gap the next time they stumble.

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16 minutes ago, DG_HMFC said:

Have they given free tickets to the schools? The whole crowd is full of bairns :lol:

It's 10,000 children in to make a crowd to adhere to the Czech Republic's covid protocols.

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1 minute ago, John Findlay said:

It's 10,000 children in to make a crowd to adhere to the Czech Republic's covid protocols.

Should have kept reading , pleasingly turned it on and its 1-0 Sparta

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2 minutes ago, John Findlay said:

It's 10,000 children in to make a crowd to adhere to the Czech Republic's covid protocols.

They have a stadium ban for racism

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3 minutes ago, John Findlay said:

It's 10,000 children in to make a crowd to adhere to the Czech Republic's covid protocols.

Is it not due to previous racism issues? Anyway not much better tonight, the monkey noises are loud and clear 

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2 minutes ago, lou said:

Is it not due to previous racism issues? Anyway not much better tonight, the monkey noises are loud and clear 

Personally sounded like booing to me.

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2 minutes ago, lou said:

Is it not due to previous racism issues? Anyway not much better tonight, the monkey noises are loud and clear 

It's not monkey noises they are booing kammara cause they blame him for the Slavia guy getting barred 

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I know it’s against a higher calibre of opponent but Ranger look a shell of the team they were last season. Take away Ryan Kent and they have zero spark. Their new signings Sakala and Bacuna look awful.

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2 minutes ago, Rockwell said:

It's not monkey noises they are booing kammara cause they blame him for the Slavia guy getting barred 

I didn't realise it was only Kamara getting booked, I just notice the noise being when a black player was oh the ball

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7 minutes ago, lou said:

I didn't realise it was only Kamara getting booked, I just notice the noise being when a black player was oh the ball

 

 

Barisic was also getting booed. It's whenever Rangers have possession.

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All this Prague talk i gave Dukla Prague a google as havent heard of them in a long time. Apparently 4th in the Czech national League. Had disappeared for a few years but reappeared and made it back to the top league in 2011

 

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1 minute ago, DG_HMFC said:

I hope Robbie has confidence in our squad to go to Ibrox and attack this lot because we have the ability to hurt them.


agree. Wouldn’t mind if we go there and lose.. as long as we try to win and don’t bend over meekly. 
 

i don’t think we will this time

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7 minutes ago, DG_HMFC said:

I hope Robbie has confidence in our squad to go to Ibrox and attack this lot because we have the ability to hurt them.

We know fine what RN will do at Ibrox. It’s not even a discussion worth having. He might get away with it I suppose but history suggests otherwise

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2 minutes ago, jamboy1982 said:

Sparta dominating this game. Even with the introduction of £17 million pound man ianis hagi hasn’t helped! 

My betting slip suggests it will be a draw mate lol

 

having said that, Fenerbache are screwing me now anyway

Edited by JimmyCant
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